One Hundred Years of Solitude 475the utopia envisioned by the founders. The com-
munity is abandoned by its inhabitants; following
the banana company massacre Macondo decays
under the persistent, drenching rains; the last of the
Buendía line is born with a pig’s tail, suggesting a
return to more primitive beginnings; and finally the
annihilating winds begin to blow and the alpha and
omega of Macondo’s existence collide. To the extent
that Macondo mimics 20th-century Latin Ameri-
can communities, the novel describes internal and
external forces that create or exacerbate a myriad of
problems in the region, including: failure to under-
stand and to utilize technology effectively, a regional
identity crisis, government-sponsored violence, cor-
ruption in international business dealings, an inabil-
ity to cope with social issues and class disparities,
and an isolationist perspective that prevents Latin
America from proactively seeking and engaging in
solutions.
Anne Massey
Fate in One Hundred Years of Solitude
Eternal return is a view of events in which history
and time are perceived as repetitious processes that
doom society to revert back to its origins without
ever progressing. This concept is pervasive through-
out One Hundred Years of Solitude as the novel
recounts the history of Macondo from its founding
to its annihilation, a destruction that coincides with
a potential rebirth as the last of the Buendías seeks
to uncover the secrets of his personal and commu-
nal past. However, at the exact moment that these
origins are to be revealed, destructive forces prevail,
the town is swept away in a windstorm, and the
opportunity to revitalize the community through
a new beginning is lost. Instead, Macondo, and by
implication Latin America, is fated to repeat its
past, unaware that it is merely participating in a
new destructive cycle. With the recollection of past
mistakes erased by the storm, the missteps of history
will inevitably lead yet again to the community’s
complete eradication.
Specific details and scenes support this pes-
simistic view. The repetition of identical or similar
names—Aureliano, Arcadio, Aureliano José, Aure-
liano Segundo, José Arcadio Segundo, etc.—over
the course of generations reflects the repetition of
eternal return. Moreover, such repetition creates
confusion as characters and events overlap. This rep-
etition and confusion, a destruction of logical order,
are microcosms of the larger pattern; each genera-
tion, a cycle unto itself, mirrors the creation, decay,
and destruction seen in the history of Macondo as
a whole.
Melquíades’s character undergoes a similar cycle.
The Gypsy initially appears able to evade aging and
death. In fact, José Arcadio Buendía believes that
Melquíades has brought eternal life to the entire
community with the daguerreotype. The commu-
nity’s patriarch observes that the people of Macondo
begin to wear away, but their images are forever
preserved. Although Melquíades may symbolize
eternal life and even declares that he has discovered
immortality, shortly after this declaration, he is
discovered drowned. José Arcadio Buendía resists
burying his friend but is forced to do so as the
body begins to decompose in the inevitable cycle of
creation-decay-death.
Macondo’s founder, José Arcadio Buendía, has
numerous experiences related to the cyclical nature
of time. He believes Monday continuously repeats
itself and grows violent trying to escape the cycle.
He laments the breaking of the time machine, a
mechanism that might have permitted escape from
the eternal repetition and spends time trying to find
concrete evidence of the passage of time. His family,
overwhelmed by his violent behavior, decides to tie
him to a tree, where he is all but forgotten. The life
of this community patriarch, a would-be inventor
himself, mimics the process of eternal return.
At the start of his imprisonment, Colonel Aure-
liano Buendía has a moment of déjà vu, and later
he expresses his weariness over the eternal war in
which nothing changes except his own aging. He
even creates his own symbolic cycle, molding golden
fishes only to melt them down again. When Ursula,
the community matriarch, sees that the Gypsies
no longer bring their inventions to Macondo, she
fears the end of the world. Later, she observes that
time seems to be working in reverse, and when she
goes blind, she realizes that every day the family
repeats the same words and actions. Finally, she
dies after devolving into fetal form. Fernanda, who
takes over the family’s care in the midst of Ursula’s